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I've gained and lost 100s of lbs in my lifetime, but now am facing critical need to get 100 lbs off! I've been counting calories and exercising for 12 days, staying under 1700 cals/day and walking 30 min + yoga 5 days a week. All I've accomplished is to GAIN 7 lbs. What's going on?

First thing is your calories are too low. Body reacts to what it thinks is starvation by hording fat.

Bump up your calories substantially and take your cardio routine out to about 50 minutes to 1 hour. At 100+ pounds excess bodyweight, you are in hormonal overdrive to gain weight, so you need to a counter hormone response of sufficient magnitude. Walking isn't really strong enough to do the trick. You need either an incline, or if your hips and knees are okay, try an orbital device in your gym with the simultaneous arm movement. Do it in two 30 min segments if you have to. Take some L-carnitine and coq10 before and after cardio. Point is you need at least an hour of cardio activity to really help you overcome the hormonal disadvantage the excess fat puts you at.

Next thing is there is an opportunity cost to repeatedly gaining and losing weight. It hard wires the body to be fat and over time, makes weight loss much more difficult. That is why this go round using exercise over restrictive dieting is so critical. You only have so many trips to the well, and you don't want to create a hormonal rebound effect from the way you are trying to do restrictive dieting.

I was wondering about the calorie count and over-exercising. I had been using an incline and/or using the elliptical in place of treadmill so that's the right direction.

I've also read about L-carnitine and coq10, but was hesitant to take them. Is there a recommended amount to take? I've definitely got a lot of history to counter and my age and hormonal changes are all working against me. Thanks!! I really needed some good direction and encouragement!

You have to think of your weight loss more in terms of eliminating weight gain patterns than losing weight. Losing weight is easy. People do it all the time. It's not the same thing as eliminating a weight gain pattern.

Walk through our VEEP system and let me know the calorie range it tells you. Guessing it will be closer to 2400. I would start your calories around there.

The next thing is making cardio work for you. You need a lot of L-carnitine - about 2 grams before and after your workout. 50 mg of coq10 before and after. It's easy to do a lot of cardio and see no results. There are a few tricks. The first thing is to take a bit of olive oil just before. No more than 1/4 teaspoon. The next thing is to make sure that you have had no carbs 3 hours prior to cardio. Empty stomach (exempting the olive oil) is best.

The final thing to clarify is that with 100 extra pounds, your bodyfat is actively putting out a lot of hormones that make you gain weight, so getting your body fat down is critical, but doing it by calorie cutting only creates a hormonal rebound. You have to invest more time to do this right. That means an hour solid of cardio (done correctly)

Thanks for all of your advice Joel. I did the VEEP and the calorie count was 1953. (wish that was higher!!) I'm 48, so I imagine my age is working against me?

Your detailed device is really helpful. I'm going to follow it as closely as possible beginning tomorrow. I was most successful in the past while following a very low carb diet and a lot of my VEEP recommended eliminating simple sugars too. Should I aim for any certain balance of carbs/protein?

Also, on the 1 hour of cardio - how hard should I work out? The VEEP also talked about overheating (which I definitely have been doing) which means I should slow down? What are your thoughts about this, I feel that if I'm not sweating I'm not working hard enough.

It helps to have the details on the supplements, I'm heading to GNC first thing tomorrow. Oh... you said no carbs 3 hours prior to cardio. You mean ALL carbs, not even vegetables? Looking forward to seeing progress!!!

It's more your ratio of good fats to processed carbs. Think of these two as being on a seesaw. On one end are processed carbs and cravings, on the other end are good fats and satiety. When one goes up, the other goes down. The more good fats you get in (with protein) and the fewer processed carbs the easier it gets.

The misnomer about carbs is that whole food carbs are very beneficial for weight loss, so no, I did not mean vegetables. You can actually try raw green beans prior to cardio. There is so much roughage and so little energy in them that your body actually expends a lot of energy to break them down, and puts out a lot of glucagon trying to raise your blood sugar, so you burn fat.

In terms of how hard to work out during cardio, the issue is more resistance, less speed. Most people favor a faster pace and lower resistance. Do the opposite, more resistance at a slower pace ( not too slow, not too fast) You don't want to get into heavy breathing or extremely hot.

What do you think of that? I did purchase some and after reading the nutritional label am thinking that this may help balance the protein/carb ration of my diet while still getting adequate calories. Should I use this?

I lost 4 lbs. Yesterday I took 500mg L-Carnitine, 200 mg (bought this instead of 50 mg by mistake) coQ10 and 1/4 t olive oil before doing 30 min on treadmill at +10 incline. I sweat but didn't feel overheated. Then I took another 500 mg L-Carnitine + 8 oz shake of Whey Isolate 28. I also took 2400 mg Omega 3-6-9 (fish, flax, borage) during the day. I kept calories at about 1800. Then did a 45 min yoga class.

Should I worry about the 200 mg coQ10 instead of the 50 you recommended? I'm still a little hesitant about 2g L-Carnitine (I took 1g total) is there any harm in that dosage? I'm excited about making progress!!! Thanks!!

One of the great myths about weight loss is the idea that if you eat 200 more calories than your daily allowance you gain weight.

The truth is that our metabolism is somewhat elastic. It tends to burn the extra calories off through heating you up. We all know this is true of young people. The trick when you are a bit older is to let the extra 100 calories come from things that make your body work, and to make the extra 100-200 calories a separate meal. Try some roughage (RAW, thick fibrous veggies) with a bit of dense protein.

The dose is fine on the L-carnitine. Higher doses are better. You need at least 2 grams to get it to work. I take about 4 grams per day. The extra coq10 is fine as well. Both of these things work to improve fat metabolism.

I'm trying very hard to keep this field tilted, but I'm hoping all of these changes take some time??? I have not blown my diet, kept up the supplements, but only was able to walk 35 min over the weekend. And I'm up 3 lbs from the 4 lb loss.

I've only been following your plan for about 4 days, so tell me that I'm being too impatient, PLEASE. I can't believe that I'm not losing weight after such horrible over-eating the past 2 years and now keeping my diet on track.

I'm cursed! If I'm going to gain 3 lbs I could at least have eaten cheesecake! LOL *Monday morning blues*